Idle BLE message receive without advertising

[Alex Lynchosky]

Is there a way to have a device ready to receive a message (while the BLE stack is initiated) without advertising?

For our product, we will be having potentially hundreds of units near each other, and they all need to be able to connect to a host device; but we don't want them to all be broadcasting forever, as that would clog up the selection process. So what we need is a way to turn the advertising on remotely, so that the unit is not advertising forever, but can be accessed easily without resetting.

We do not want the lights to advertise in intervals either, we need an on-demand way to get them to start advertising. Are there any ways to do this with the Nordic? Thanks in advance!

[Ole Morten]

This sounds very similar to the question here, so I'd recommend you to take a look at it. In summary, if the device never turns on its radio (which it doesn't if it isn't advertising), there is no way to wake it up.

I would therefore recommend you to let all devices always advertise, although potentially with a long advertising interval if you want to conserve power. The device selection can be done for instance based on using unique names, or including some kind of manufacturer specific data in the advertisement packet that differentiates the different devices.